The Observation Deck

Last week on Facebook I saw mention of new addition at Madison Park.
It is a couple of Futsbol courts.....I never heard of it, but "Futsbol" is soccer played on a smaller asphalt surface.

During the holiday weekend I went to check out the new courts, which are still locked. I believe the city is waiting for the goals to arrive.
Here is a photo.
One resident has told me that the courts were changed last year, and that people had been playing roller hockey there.

I asked one city hall source about the timing and the decision process that decided "Futsbol"....he says he was not included in any discussion, and he never learned about it until it happened. City Hall stopped sending information to the Observer months ago, so I have no idea when the project started.

Lakewood has long, deep history of soccer, so a soccer court is not a bad idea. However, I know that LOBC, an organized group of local citizens, has been lobbying for years to get more basketball hoops in town. They were entirely left out of this planning process. Lakewood's history of hoops is even deeper than the one with soccer.
As far as I can tell, the "planning process" was pretty much the Mayor himself.

Can anyone lend insight on this?

Michael Deneen wrote: City Hall stopped sending information to the Observer months ago, so I have no idea when the project started.

Mike actually it stopped shortly before they banned the paper at City Hall, making up a host of lies why they had to do it!

City Hall can't even tell the truth about silly stuff like that, Pretty wild But then as one City Hall member told me at Indian Garden, "Lakewood residents deserve to be lied to." not even sure what that meant.

The street hockey courts for over a year are at Kauffman Park. It was funny as get out. A bunch of guys making way more noise than basketball with their car doors open playing rap music real loud. Of course they were all white, so not a huge issue.


From a post October 16, 2015, in a thread started by Dan Alaimo.

http://www.lakewoodobserver.com/forum/v ... ey#p170962

.

I have no quarrel with soccer. Futsbol sounds good to me.
But it seems like the attitude of the City is: ABOB - Anything But Outdoor Basketball.
Any one who knows me knows basketball could never be my sport, but it doesn't take much to see that there is tremendous demand for outdoor hoops in Lakewood.

But it seems like the attitude of the City is: ABOB - Anything But Outdoor Basketball.

I get that something went wrong with some basketball courts and the city government, but this narrative doesn't fly. The city just built new half court goals at each of the new elementary schools.

todd vainisi wrote:

But it seems like the attitude of the City is: ABOB - Anything But Outdoor Basketball.

I get that something went wrong with some basketball courts and the city government, but this narrative doesn't fly. The city just built new half court goals at each of the new elementary schools.

But did the CIty build them? I would think that was the school district.

Part of the question was full courts, but also a program organized to the extent that there would be supervision as existed at Kauffman under the first iteration of LOBC. Like most locations in Lakewood, it wasn't a good one, but there was a place to build a sound barrier - it needed a better, more expensive one - and activities there could be easily monitored from the parking lot.

todd vainisi wrote:

But it seems like the attitude of the City is: ABOB - Anything But Outdoor Basketball.

I get that something went wrong with some basketball courts and the city government

Executive summary: there is no executive summary of this. It has apparently been an issue for an entire decade now. I am working to familiarize myself with the issue, but a search of "basketball court" on the Deck, alone, produces an abundance of material.

I can offer a preliminary recommendation of this 27-page 2012 report (including exhibits) by CSU student Colin McKay.

Unfortunately, I have the impression that McKay's effort was rendered incomplete within two years, by events chronicled in the "Kauffman Hoops Closed?" thread, which currently runs to 18 pages.

My further impression, which someone can probably confirm or critique in relatively short order, is that:

• A decade ago Lakewood was home to around 20 outdoor basketball courts
• That number was drastically and suddenly lowered; and organized, well-informed citizen advocacy has since struggled to restore courts, through multiple administrations
• Which seems worth comparing with the length and complexity of the process, as such, by which Lakewood created a futsal court

All this is, as I say, a fairly shallow dive into a deep pool, so anyone with institutional memory feel free to step in.

mjkuhns wrote:My further impression, which someone can probably confirm or critique in relatively short order, is that:
A decade ago Lakewood was home to around 20 outdoor basketball courts
That number was drastically and suddenly lowered; and organized, well-informed citizen advocacy has since struggled to restore courts, through multiple administrations
Which seems worth comparing with the length and complexity of the process, as such, by which Lakewood created a futsal court

I've been following this issue for a decade....the above information is correct.
Courts were not returned when the schools were rebuilt, and they were yanked from all city parks around 2007.

The right place for city basketball courts is Lakewood park and Madison park, where they can be surrounded with plenty of green space in an environment that is already designed to allow large congregations of folks having fun to do so without disrupting the neighborhood.